The Mental Game: Why Chess Players Need Sport Psychology

The power of mindset

Picture this: It's the World Junior Chess Championships, and you're in your final year of U20 eligibility. You've prepared for months, prepared openings, analyzed positions, and studied endgames. The first half of the tournament goes well—you're playing solid chess, making good decisions, and your moves come easy. Then something shifted in you, but you can’t figure out what happened. In the second half of the championships, everything starts falling apart. Your mind is unclear, moves feel uncertain, your confidence wavers, and your results show one’s turning to zeros.

Though not exactly the same, does this situation sound familiar to you? Well, this was my reality at the 2019 World Junior Chess Championship in New Delhi. Despite all my preparation and years of experience, something was missing from my game—and it wasn't just my chess knowledge. It was also my mindset. This realization became the ultimate push for me to learn more about sports psychology and how it is crucial for chess players.

But before I dive into that, here is my quick introduction!

My Journey from a Chess Player to a Sports Psychology Consultant

Hi, I'm Saloni Sapale, a Woman International Master who has taken an unconventional path in the chess world. I've been playing since age 6 and competing internationally since 14. I have won many laurels for India in age-group events on the World, Asian, and Commonwealth platforms. By age 21, I had gained substantial experience both on and off the board. But more importantly, I discovered something crucial: there's so much happening in our minds during competition that directly impacts our performance.

Have a look at WIM Saloni Sapale's achievements:

Questions like "Am I playing the right move?", "Will my opponent surprise me?", "Am I prepared enough?" and even "Who am I outside of chess?" constantly swirled through my mind during tournaments. This became the catalyst for my journey towards pursuing sport psychology education.

Today, I stand at a unique intersection—one of the few people who truly understand both the demands of professional chess and the science of sports psychology. After completing my master's degree in sports and performance psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, I've worked with competitive athletes across swimming, diving, wrestling, track and field, cross-country, and handball, assisting them in performance enhancement and nurturing their holistic well-being. But my heart always belonged to chess - the sport that has shaped me and given me so much.

That's why I'm launching Mind Over Moves, a sport psychology consultancy specifically designed for chess players.

Mind Over Moves was launched in September 2025. Check out the official website here.

Why Chess Players Need Mental Training

Chess is unique among sports. It's largely a mental combat where every move is a decision made under pressure, often with limited time and significant consequences. Yet while we spend countless hours studying openings, tactics, and endgames, how much time do we dedicate to training our minds?

Consider the mental demands chess places on us: We must maintain intense concentration for hours, sometimes up to 6-7 hours in a single game. We face constant evaluation —"Is this the right plan?", "Did I miss something?", "Am I falling behind on time?" We experience the weight of representing ourselves, our parents, our coaches, and even our countries. To add to that, the rating system means every game has measurable consequences.

Then there are the tournament-specific challenges: adapting to different playing conditions, managing energy across multiple rounds, dealing with difficult opponents or unexpected situations, handling the pressure of crucial games that could determine prizes or norms, and maintaining composure when things go wrong.

Sounds like a lot, right?

This is exactly where sport psychology comes in and empowers individuals to overcome these challenges. Mental skills like confidence building, decision-making clarity, managing internal dialogue, handling anxiety symptoms (e.g., stomach butterflies, racing heart, body heating up or overthinking spirals), and bouncing back from tough losses are just as crucial as knowing your Sicilian Dragon variations. Mental training is very important because technical knowledge only means so much if you can't access it under pressure.

And here's something important you should also know - you don't need to be “struggling” to benefit from sport psychology. Many athletes work with mental performance consultants to go from good to great, not just to “fix problems”.

There are significant proven benefits of working with a sports psychology consultant for chess players. Many well-established, professional players in the chess world have already begun acknowledging the said benefits! Recently, after his World Chess Championship win, GM Gukesh revealed that he was working with mental coach Paddy Upton during the preparation of the tournament.

Even GM Vidit Gujrathi and IM Soumya Swaminathan had a great conversation with Sports Psychologist Gayatri Vartak regarding the benefits of chess players working with sport psychology consultants.

An additional benefit of learning these mental skills is that they’re transferable. The techniques you learn for chess will benefit every area of your life where performance matters. Be it academics, your full-time job, or any other sport you might be playing, these skills aim to enhance performance nonetheless.

Achieve the competitive edge with Mind Over Moves

Now that you know about the benefits of sports psychology in chess, you might be wondering what makes working with me and Mind Over Moves different from others.

This is the difference - I will guide you to find the mental game solutions that work best for you, with personalized excellence being the motto. I'll collaborate with you on how to learn, develop, and practice these skills so you can use them effectively during matches and tournaments. I will serve as your consultant—whenever you want to check in with me to review and validate your mental game plan for upcoming tournaments, we can work on that together. We'll collaborate to help you build these skills under pressure, so when you're in tournament conditions, you'll trust yourself to implement them successfully.

As a former chess player, I understand the realities of competitive chess - the hours of training, crucial results in tournaments, the financial investments in coaching and travel, and the pressure of managing life outside of chess. That's exactly why I ensure every session provides tangible value. You'll walk away from each session with at least one new skill you can apply immediately.

My approach focuses on what we can control: our moves, thought processes, emotions, and attention. While winning and losing matter, we work on not becoming excessively attached to results. Instead, we build skills that help you perform consistently, regardless of external circumstances.

Here are some examples of the areas we can work on -

Building a Confident Mindset: Developing unshakeable belief in your abilities and maintaining that confidence even after tough losses or mistakes.

Staying Calm and Focused: Simple breathing exercises and mindfulness techniques to keep your cool when the pressure is on.

Controlling Your Inner Voice: Learning to notice whether your thoughts are helping or hurting your game, and how to turn negative self-talk into positive support.

Mental Practice and Imagery: Using your imagination to prepare for games and recall the positions you've studied when it really counts.

Managing Your Emotions: Understanding the difference between making thoughtful decisions and letting your feelings take over during tournaments.

Handling Nerves: Practical ways to deal with the butterflies in your stomach and racing thoughts that come during competition.

Making Confident Decisions: Building trust in your choices, whether you're picking your next move or deciding if you should offer a draw.

Knowing What Matters: Figuring out what's truly important to your chess success so you can put your energy in the right places.

The list goes on! Sport psychology offers far more tools than most people realize—I certainly didn't know the depth of this field when I started.

My ultimate goal is to work myself out of a job with each chess player. I want you to become so skilled at managing your mental game that you no longer need my support. The greatest success I can achieve is knowing you've developed the self-sufficiency to handle competitive challenges on your own.

Let’s master the mental game together!

Every chess player knows that success and failure are part of the game. But with the right mental training, you can approach both of them with greater resilience, clarity, and purpose. Whether you're aiming to break through a rating plateau, perform better in crucial tournaments, or simply enjoy the game more fully, developing your mental skills can be the difference-maker.

If my story resonates with you, or if you're curious about how sports psychology training could enhance your chess journey, I'd love to help you discover what's possible when the mind truly goes over the moves.

Please reach out to me via email, saloni.mindovermoves@gmail.com, or visit my website here.

I am excited to work with each and every one of you!

Philosophy of Mind Over Moves

Mind Over Moves offers sports psychology services specifically designed to assist chess players in developing the necessary mental skills toolkit to elevate their mental game and enhance their performance. Backed by professional, competitive chess experience and rigorous sports psychology education and training, we at Mind Over Moves offer unique insights that are exclusively applicable to enhancing chess performance. Our aim is simple - we relentlessly strive to support you in achieving your highest potential and nurturing your holistic mental well-being.

Important link

Mind Over Moves official website

Mind Over Moves Instagram Page